Kevin Greutert’s Jessabelle tells the story of a luminous 26-year-old woman, in love and pregnant, who suffers a horrifying car accident in which her unborn child and boyfriend die whereas she becomes momentarily wheelchair-bound. Alone and flat-broke, Jessabelle (Sarah Snook) returns to her childhood home in Louisiana, to live with her father (David Andrews), whom she hasn’t seen in years. He is an emotionally detached drunkard with whom the sweet natured Jessabelle fails to connect, yet she cares deeply for him. After all, the man had a tough life: his wife was diagnosed with cancer while pregnant with Jessabelle, and died in agony right after giving birth.
In the lonely nights in her old Victorian home, Jessabelle discovers a box with her name that has VHS tapes from 1987 where her long-deceased mother (Joelle Carter) gives her some creepy Tarot readings and warns her about an unwanted dangerous female presence in the house. Worse even: she predicts her death too.
Editor of five Saw films and director of part 6 and part 7, Kevin Greutert is certainly not dealing with torture porn here, but with good old classical tension and suspense in the vein of the supernatural. He doesn’t rely on brutal shocks, but on eerie atmosphere. But he doesn’t get it quite right on any level. To be honest, Saw 6 and Saw 7 excel more on their own right than Jessabelle in its category. Granted, it doesn’t take much to pull off a decent Saw movie, but still.
On the one hand, the characters are meant to have some dramatic weight and genuine relevance, but as it’s the case with so many recent horror movies (take Poltergeist or Ouija), the characters in Jessabelle are nothing but lazily revived clichés. We are asked to care for Jessabelle and her suffering and despite the somewhat convincing performance by Aussie Sarah Snook, she amounts to little more than being a generic scream queen chased and attacked by one tireless ghost. Plus the scary parts are not that scary at all. After all, a deafening sound design doesn’t necessarily provoke fear. And a menacing ambiance means more than a nervous camera among shadows and silhouettes.
On the other hand, Jessabelle’s story relies almost solely on a common narrative gimmick: as more and more occurrences and episodes take place almost throughout the entire movie, you think you are getting to see the whole picture, that is, little by little. But just at the very, very end, essential facts are hastily and conveniently tossed into play, and now you realize you were a fool because you were reading the story wrong from the start. For Jessabelle wants to leave you speechless. But if you’ve seen your fair number of horror movies, it just won’t do the trick.
In fact, if the story of Jessabelle, the girl, had been properly fleshed out with meaty characters and an overall truly ominous atmosphere, and the effect of the last-minute-turn-of-the-screw had been downplayed, then the film would have stood a chance at being both frightening and ghostly. As is, it’s just more of the same.
Production notes:
Jessabelle (US, 2014). Directed by Kevin Greutert. Written by Robert Ben Garant. With Sarah Snook, Mark Webber, David Andrews, Joelle Carter. Cinematography: Michael Fimognari. Editing: Kevin Greutert. Running time: 90 min
